First impressions: Drugstore Swatches

I’m gathering products I can use for character creator and thought I’d share some recent purchases with you guys. Although this isn’t a full review, the swatches should still provide a decent idea in regards to colour pay off, texture, and finish.

Firstly, we have these two kajal eyeliners from Face of Australia. Think I bought the two of them for 11 or 12 dollars. The light does make the green swatch look more blue than it is in real life. So the shape of the product is quite gimmicky and I can’t tell how it will possibly maintain a useful shape as you use more and more of the product so it will probably move on to being an eyeshadow stick after a while. I have to say that they’re both really opaque and the colours look really good on my arm. I’ll probably end up using these for a fair amount of looks and if they’re good on my actual face, they might make it into my regular makeup one instead of my ‘crazy shit I almost never wear’ bag.

Next we have three products from two quite different companies. Firstly, a lipgloss from Revlon called Electrio Shock. Secondly, two shadows from a company called Paint. They make the best low budget nail polishes in the business (often sell 5 for 10 dollars), so I thought it was worth giving their eyeshadows a shot.

I’m slightly disappointed by the lipgloss since it’s only a very mild blue sheen that can probably be used over red polishes to make them stand out a bit more. A common trick is to use a red lipstick with blue undertones to make ones teeth look whiter. I imagine that’s the intention of this gloss. I just don’t like glosses, so I’ll probably only use this one to enhance looks for character creator. Or for #30DaysofLipstick.

The eyeshadows are MB5 (green) and MI7 (black). As you can tell they’re buildable but quite powdery. I’d probably wear these with a primer to try to limit fallout. I’ll probably need to use these properly to be able to say more about them.

Next up are two sets of eyeshadows from more common drugstore brands. One from Loreal called Blackened Smokes with four shadows and one from Maybeline called Hyper Diamonds GN-1.

Honestly, these seem pretty useless. Even when I tried building them up, they refused to reach an acceptable level of opacity. I could barely see some of them on my skin. This photo is taken after I really tried building them up and it’s still nothing spectacular. I’d say the Maybeline palette has a bit more potential than the Loreal quad, but I’m not really certain I’ll end up using these. They might just go straight in the bin after I’ve used them for the 1-2 looks i have in mind.